Through the looking glass, I reside
by xfmoon
Summary: What do you see when you look in the mirror?


**A/N:** It starts out a few weeks (let's say 15) after Jane and Lisbon met for the first time.

**Disclaimer:** I own a few mirrors, but I haven't seen even the reflection of the rights to the Mentalist. Don't own Through the looking glass either.

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><p>Screech. Skin against glass...<p>

Tires against pavement. Skin against pavement.

She stopped her movement. Hand hovering mid-air.

Shaking her head free of any thoughts, she let it fall to her side. Flop. She felt it hit her thigh. Skin on skin. The contact jolting her back to reality.

Green eyes met hers. Lifelessly they stared back. Mocking her. In the mail slot sized hole, which her hand had just made on the condensation covered mirror, they looked blurred. Dew drops clung to the smooth glass, stretching, pushing and pulling the surfaces they reflected into obscure views, and forming their own little house of mirrors.

Lisbon opened the window to chase away the mist that remained as floating clouds in the room.

As she dabbed her hair with the oversized towel the moisture slowly evaporated. Fresh air replaced stale, leaving behind faint traces like snail tracks were her hand had slit over the mirror. She gathered her damp hair in a little messy bun and with one end of the towel she polished the glass carefully until the world looked relatively normal again, nothing askew or out of shape. Just her, naked, in the mirror staring back.

She thought of her mom painting silly animals with her fingers on the bathroom mirror in her childhood home. Of her and her little brothers playing football outside, then being ushered into the bathroom, muddy clothes covering the floor as her mother shampooed her hair complaining that she had gotten four boys. Growing up it had always been a fight getting Teresa to wear cute pink dresses with laces and bows, you couldn't move around in those things properly and dirt was banned in their vicinity. No she had always been a tomboy, but that didn't stop her body from looking like her mother's, especially her face. Everyone that had known her mother had told her so. The shape of her nose, her green eyes, and freckle speckled skin, but not her smile that belonged to her father.

She grimaced at the mirror, trying to instil some movement into the dull image. It was supposed to be a smile but it never really reached her eyes, and just turned out looking stupid instead. Why bother, smiling was overrated anyway, especially in her line of business. A nod of understanding, a kind word to the grieving family, and a sharp tone towards the criminals, that was her everyday life. Smiles wasn't fitting for a crime scene.

So how come she kept thinking of that one smile in particular? Those two perfect rows of white calcium that warmed up a room just by being exposed. It had been a few cases now, and still she could hardly believe she'd agreed to have him on her team. He was a troublemaker, but of course he very effectively closed cases, there was no denying that.

Her fingers dug into the jar of face cream, she smeared some of it over her skin and felt pleasure in the cooling effect it brought to her dampened skin.

Maybe it was because he reminded her of her father. Not in physique, in that department they were as different as night and day. Where her dad had been big, muscular, a bit of a brute force to be reckoned with, never shying away from danger. Patrick Jane was a bit on the soft side, dressed to impress, he wasn't exactly running away from danger, but you wouldn't find him in the flames of the fire, he was just poking it, and he wasn't less muscular just different from her father. His sunshine gold hair was a stark contrast to her father's though, who had had raven black hair like the rest of the Liisbon family and a scruffy beard that scratched whenever he would cuddle and kiss his children goodnight.

Most of her memories of her father had been affected by the aftermath of her mother's accident. But she had been old enough to have a few good ones from before too and those were the ones she treasured the most, the little glimpses into what might have been.

It wasn't that their personalities were alike either, Patrick Jane's and her father's. Her mother's death had changed her father completely, he was an entirely different person from that moment on. She hadn't known Jane before his tragedy, but she thought it unlikely for anyone to go through something like that unchanged. Maybe they were in fact opposites there too, her father had turned bad, where Jane had turned good - from what she'd heard of his endeavours in his previous life. Though she still wasn't quite sure he was all that good, didn't know him well enough, yet she didn't doubt that his driving force was blood vengeance. That one they shared. It was an unquenchable thirst, revenge. One that her father had satisfied with the bottle, an already dead drunken teenager couldn't be killed anew. But a serial killer, now that was a whole other deal.

No, the thing that made Lisbon compare Patrick Jane to her father was something inherent, an essential part to their characters, what made them who they were. Made them, not different, but special. From the first time she laid her eyes on him she could see it. The deep cut sadness, the bone marrow sucking kind. She had seen it in both of their eyes, it lived it's on life there, brought on by the intensity with which they had loved. Such passionate feelings were powerful and dangerous. They had the ability to alter a person. And it wasn't always for the better.

That's why any inkling of a loving feeling in Teresa's universe got thrown out or locked down, they were a disturbance, one she couldn't afford. This was why Patrick Jane subconsciously worried her. Here only after a few weeks his smile seemed to have implanted itself into her brain. It was a good trick, a defence mechanism, and a mask, a learned behaviour that had become instinctive. She knew all of that and yet she couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was something more. A true smile hiding behind the fake one, one that reached his eyes, she had seen glimmers of it..., pride at solving a case, helping those that couldn't help themselves. He was a charlatan, yes, and she had to be on her toes and step carefully, but she wouldn't give up on him, deep down she could see that he was a good person, just like her father had been.

She loosened her bun, and blew out her soft curls. Maybe she should let her hair grow out.

She might not have been strong enough to save her dad from himself, but she'd be damned if she was going to stand idly by and watch another man throw away his life over love. How could they not see how much they had to offer the world? She didn't have a saviour complex, she knew hardened criminals were tough to re-socialize and every little lost puppy didn't end up in her tiny apartment. She was a homicide detective not a doctor, she didn't save she investigated, but something in her heart told her that this one was worth the effort. She could save him from himself.

She looked at herself in the mirror one last time. Determination set, cells tingling with resolve, all the way down to her pores. Her cell phone rang reminding her that she had to get to work, there was no time for sappy ruminations, neither past nor future ones. She grabbed the phone, turned off the light in the bathroom, and went to put on her clothes, if she hurried she might even have time to run to Marie's for coffee and a bearclaw.

**xXx**

_15 years later._

Screech.

Her hand stroked over the glass wiping it clear. Left to right, right to left, and back again.

Her eyes appeared behind the misty surface. Sparkling green. She stared at the droplets silently making their ways down the sides of the mirror. One chasing another, in a race of gravity, catching up, mingling, absorbing each other, and moving on, faster than before.

_"What are you doing?"_

She jumped a little in shock seeing him emerge in the mirror behind her. _"Ehm nothing, just thinking I guess."_ She said dismissively to his reflection.

_"Thinking? It looked like you were contemplating the existence of the universe."_

He smiled infectiously, so she couldn't help smiling herself. It was a contagion she'd caught long ago. One without a cure.

Cautiously like a lion approaching its prey, he moved forward keeping his eyes glued to hers in the mirror. When he reached her he wrapped himself around her like a protective blanket. His skin felt warm and comforting against her damp body.

_"You worried?"_ He asked swaying her slightly from side to side.

She reached one hand up behind her and caressed his cheek. _"No."_ She said honestly. Her life was about to be turned topsy-turvy but as long as he was there with her everything would be fine. She had never wanted to be dependent on another human being. To care this much. But she couldn't help it. Love was a disease, one that hit as fast and blinding as lightning. Changing her on a molecular level - for the better, she hoped - from sand to glass, she could even see the differences in the mirror. The distorted image of a woman that lived but wasn't alive didn't inhabit the other side of the glass anymore, now the reflection's eyes sparkled of their own accord, and smiles came as easy as a hello. She liked this person, this happy persona she had grown into. Only now could she really understand and even empathize with her father's life choices. Going through life unfeeling might ultimately protect you from getting hurt, but it would render you no different than the lifeless image behind the glass screen of a mirror. A shadow doomed to repeat as its master commanded.

Her hand had returned to cover the two of his that were resting just below her ribcage. Yes, everything would change but only for the better. She turned around in his embrace and gave him a quick peck on the mouth before wiggling herself free to get dressed.

**xXx**

_15 hours later._

Screech...

_"This is William."_ A woman in a black pantsuit with a round logo on her right shoulder that read _'Adopt We Care'_ said, as she placed a baby in Teresa's arms.

Lisbon carefully wrapped her arms around the tiny crying lump. She smiled brightly as she looked up at Jane, who was smiling through tear glazed eyes. She caught a glimpse of her own reflection in them, she was someone's mother now. Of all the responsibilities she'd had - her dad, her brothers, her pain in the ass consultant - this one was one of the heavier ones. At least now she had more support, maybe it was time to put the past behind her and move on. Stop looking at the mirages and lingering reflections of previous events.

This was her life now, a man that loved her and whom she loved back and a little baby boy they could now call their own.

The crying continued. She rocked the baby gently. Patrick held a little sky blue rattle with a round reflective surface close to the boy's face, shaking it lightly until the boy grabbed for it, and in wonder over seeing his own face forgot to continue crying. Somehow, she thought, she had made it through and she certainly had come a long way in the process. This was it, the now and the future, round and soft and full of endless wonder.

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><p><strong>AN:** I'm not necessarily agreeing with any of this. They're just words that darts from my brain, without actually hitting the bulls eye of anything of importance. You can be happy without love. Everybody is different, various things can make people happy. I don't & I wouldn't judge.

Sorry to any X-Files fans reading this. Painful phile moment. Just wanted a fic where they adopted, instead of having their own child.

Not sure this made a whole lot of sense, I can't seem to put a decent plot into anything I write these days.


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